To Albert Lea Community Theatre.

If you don’t appreciate opera, ballet or professional stage performances, just know this: the high-definition showings of the Metropolitan Opera, National Theatre Live and the Bolshoi Ballet are bringing people from around the region to downtown Albert Lea. And that’s good for a number of reasons. Bringing people to town means they likely will spend money here, and the best kind of dollars are tourism dollars because they donate to our taxes and local economy but cost our government services — such as schools, jail, human services, water and sewer — very little or even nothing at all. It’s almost like a donation to all of us.

The high-definition screenings of performances in New York, London and Moscow also bring an upscale cultural quality to downtown and specifically for the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center. Just by having them, it says something about the quality of the arts in Albert Lea and the standards of the people who reside here. Downtown needs to be a cultural center to be successful. Being pretty isn’t enough. It has to be a place people want to go.

We were glad to hear that Albert Lea Community Theatre has added the Bolshoi Ballet to the lineup. The first one, “The Legend of Love,” takes place in November. It is a story of forbidden love and self-sacrifice in a royal palace setting.

 

To the early cold snap.

We realize the air temperature gets colder in the autumn, but the season technically doesn’t begin until Sept. 23 this year. Jack Frost and Old Man Winter need to go back to the the North Pole and leave us alone. We don’t want to endanger the local crops with freezing mornings, and while temperatures in the 60s are nice, no one wants daytime temperatures in the 30s or 40s just yet. Fortunately, the cold snap of last week should be over, and the forecast for the coming week has highs in the 60s once again. Now that’s the September weather we know and love.

 

To coaches who send in game statistics promptly.

We cannot thank the coaches of local sports enough for their support, particularly the ones who are kind enough to email or fax stats not long after games conclude. Some of them just keep the stats on an iPad or some other electronic tablet, then double check them on the bus and hit send. Either way, we appreciate the efficiency and timeliness.

Most coaches know the importance of getting stats into print. But some coaches don’t care much for them.

Sports reporter Mike Simmons of the Northwood Anchor explains it well. He reminds coaches that the statistics are not just about the paper; they are about the students. The kid who had two tackles in a football game probably isn’t going to be in the story written by the reporter, but he will be in the statistics at the end. If the coach doesn’t send the stats, the coach fails to give the kids that special attention.

After all, there remains something special about being in print — you can hold it in your hand, cut it out, scrapbook it, show your grandparents, carry it in a wallet, pin it to a wall, store it in a box, frame it and numerous other pluses. It seems to matter more when a name is printed. Perhaps it is because anything printed can’t be reversed and because print costs more than pixels on a computer screen.

The statistics at the end of sports stories acknowledge the achievements of the kids. Coaches who get them to the paper in a timely fashion, win or lose, seem to be the ones who care the most about the students under their guidance. Like how tipping says a lot about a person, sending stats says a lot about a coach and his or her school.